Combretum vendae

Combretum vendae, the Venda bushwillow, is a shrub of 1,5 m to 3 m, occasionally a small tree up to 5 m in height (SA Tree List No. 540.3). The bark is grey and smooth, the young branchlets densely covered in white or grey hairs.

Flowers grow from leaf axils in spikes up to 2 cm long. The small, hairy flowers are pale yellow to cream, their sepals red or purple. Flowering happens in early spring to mid-spring.

The four-winged or sometimes three-winged fruit is ellipsoid and green flushed pink or red, turning darker red with age. The fruit is 2 cm by 1,5 cm, its stalk up to 7 mm long.

The species distribution of this South African endemic is quite small in the Soutpansberg in Limpopo. The habitat here is savanna on higher slopes among rocks, the soil red, sandy and acid, derived from weathered quartzitic sandstone and quartzite. The species is not considered to be threatened in its habitat early in the twenty first century.

C. vendae is closely related to C. nelsonii, the Waterberg bushwillow (Coates Palgrave, 2002; Van Wyk and Van Wyk, 1997; www.redlist.sanbi.org).